I was raised Fundamentalist Christian. I know you all know stories, but here's mine:

[woodsprite]

65. I'm glad you're free too! I grew up in a fundy church.

I felt like I lived my whole young life looking over my shoulder for God to smite me for the least little infraction or thought. I would cry, be sick (from nerves) when I was a little girl and my mom would make me go to church with our neighbors. I was taking nerve/anti-anxiety meds by the time I was in 3rd grade. Truthfully, they probably sent my brother and I to church on Sunday so mom and dad could have the mornings kid free. I would pretend I was asleep on the ride to/from church (or maybe it was the meds), but the neighbors were always talking about how it was the end times and soon the streets would be running with blood up to a horses bridle.

I told my mother that experience amounted to emotional child abuse.

My uncle (Baptist lay preacher) once told me that Native Americans would never be let into heaven because they didn't know the Bible. I set him straight enough that he didn't bother me with that crap again. By 13-14yo I was learning to speak my own mind.

I do go to church now, but it took many many years before I stepped foot back in one. I look at it more as a social experience - a liberal Presbyterian church - a place including a couple of governors and their families, a couple of Superior court judges, friends of Joe and a good number of Dem supporters. The few fundy Bible thumpers who were members there left when we voted down to renew a minister's contract (too conservative, ex-military) and we hired a wonderful divorced female as a minister.